How do I find useful content on the internet in 2023?

15 points by 99_00 ↗ HN
I would "just google it" but that's pointless.

14 comments

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Why not ask chatgpt?
Because it will tell you blatantly wrong things. Like the difference in SBus card compatibility between sun4c and sun4m machines is because the sun4m machines have a PCI bus!

Also it doesn't provide links to actual content.

ChatGPT as a search replacement generally increases my time investment.

Why not kys in minecraft?
You simply state a dumb statement, comes the correct ones.
If there isn't already, there should be a phrase for this - maybe "expert fishing", "strategic naïvety", or "answer-directed trolling."

The key insight seems to be that internet people seem more likely to correct you than to help you, so you phrase your query to attract helpful correction.

Alternative search engines like wiby, searx, etc?
Depends on what you are looking for.
I probe humans. When I am on (HN | Reddit) and I find an interesting discussion I ask the person to tell me more, link articles, blog posts, and textbooks.
A lot of /r/Ask* subreddits are heavily moderated and very good for in-depth knowledgeable replies. I have collected over 175 books to read just browsing /r/AskHistorians, /r/AskEconomics, /r/AskSocialScience, /r/AskScience, /r/AskScienceDiscussion, /r/IRStudies, /r/AskEngineers, /r/AskPhysics.
Also great places to be active in, asking questions to experts or people that know more in these fields, I feel like this is one of the great benefits of the internet, but often it's full of noise, subreddits like this are pure gold for getting information from.

Even just doing a google search with what you are wanting and added Reddit to the end, therefore you are getting answers to the question from people talking about it, rather than content farms.

Same here, I used to have a rule that at certain times I’d switch to those subreddits as soon as I opened HN.

/r/AskAnthropology is a decent sub btw.

What is your definition of 'useful'? Are you looking to answer a question quickly, or looking for multiple sources on a particular topic?

Why is Googling it pointless? Google is still pretty good outside of topics that automatically pull in blogspam, like "what's the best rewards credit card?".